With the expansion and sophistication of commerce and technology, companies located in a particular country or countries are able to conduct business throughout the world. This business diversity includes entry into established and stable countries and into developing countries were emerging markets present profitable opportunities for conducting business. These diverse countries and markets present equally diverse cultures, social and economic conditions and climatic differences. Consequently, each country or market present different challenges and risks to which business travelers may be exposed and for which the travelers may not be aware or prepared.
Many aspects are present in the travel risk landscape in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Emerging markets present numerous safety and medical challenges. As countries develop, widening social and economic divisions within the countries can feed increases in violent crimes, including kidnapping for ransom and extortion. Terrorism continues to pose threats, with international travelers being within the target group for terrorist attacks. The nature of these crimes can result in serious injuries and fatalities, long term mental health problems that may result from kidnapping or terrorism, loss of property and interruption of business activities.
In addition to medical incidents arising out of criminal activity, other medical risks are present in international travel. Injuries and fatalities may be caused due to road and traffic conditions, and other deficiencies in the national infrastructure. Exposure of individuals to foreign agents can result in the contraction of diseases to which the individuals are not immune. Plague and famine may also impact individuals and business operations. Similarly, environmental conditions and events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and floods can arise with minimal warning and cause devastation and loss of human life and property.
When sending employees out to work in international destinations, organizations may have a duty of care to ensure, as best as possible, the safety of its employees from these and other travel-related risks. The organization may have a responsibility to perform extensive risk assessments when expanding into emerging markets, and to monitor changing threat levels where the employees are exposed to risk and disseminate updated information in a timely and effective manner. Prior to travel, it may be desirable and prudent to prepare personnel traveling to countries having different risk profiles than their routine environments. These preparations may include educating the personnel on cultural awareness of issues relating to local religions and tribal cultures, male-female relations, meeting protocols and the like, on general travel safety practices, and on general and immediate safety and whether issues. The organization may also establish procedures to react to travel-related incidents ranging from routine issues such as lost baggage and travel documents to extraordinary circumstances such as catastrophic weather events and acts of violence perpetrated against organizational personnel.
Currently, risk assessments, pre-travel preparation and education, and travel-related incident response have been handled using traditional technology and knowledge transfer techniques. The outcome of risk assessments may be memorialized in reports or presentations that may then be conveyed to prospective business travelers at training seminars or meetings with travel consultants. Developing situations increasing the risk in a particular country may be communicated to traveling personnel via telephone or electronic mail messages, or, in some cases, the traveler may be left to refer to local media or the Internet for the latest information on conditions within the country in which they are traveling. These delays in the delivery of the relevant risk information to an organization's traveling personnel may further increase the risk of being impacted by existing or developing conditions in the foreign country placed upon the personnel by the organization. For these reasons, a need exists for an improved system for travel risk management wherein organizations may be able to monitor the conditions in foreign countries and the locations of their personnel in those countries, and to communicate information to the personnel in a timely manner for avoiding adverse impacts of developing high risk situations and for reacting quickly to travel-related incidents in order to mitigate the adverse impact on the organization's personnel and the disruption of the organization's business.